“As organizations scale their data infrastructure on AWS, they face increasing challenges with storage cost optimization and performance,” said Rob Pankow, CEO of simplyblock. “Our platform addresses these challenges by unifying access to various AWS storage options, including local instance NVMe disks, Amazon EBS, or Amazon S3, while providing enterprise features like thin provisioning, copy-on-write clones, snapshots, storage tiering, and disaster recovery.”

Key Benefits for AWS Customers:

• Up to 75% reduction in storage costs for I/O-intensive workloads 
• Superior performance with its NVMe-first scale-out architecture
• Simplified management of storage across multiple databases, systems, and data platforms
• Enterprise-grade features, including encryption and cross-AZ disaster recovery
• Ultra-low latency with 100 microsecond p99 read latency via AWS i3en instances

Simplyblock recently demonstrated exceptional performance in MLPerf Storage v1.0 benchmarks, achieving 99.4% GPU utilization while delivering over 37 Gbit/s throughput. The platform is ready to serve a variety of I/O-intensive workloads, including but not limited to:

• Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) operations with granular requirements for quality of service (QoS) on a tenant level and consistent high-performance storage for heterogeneous database environments (serving either internal or external customers).
• Multi-tenant environments requiring secure isolation with shared storage infrastructure, supporting diverse needs for SQL databases (such as PostgreSQL and MySQL) and NoSQL alternatives.
• Kafka deployments needing cost-effective storage scaling.
• Vector database workloads demanding low-latency storage for AI/ML applications.
• Time-series databases handling high-velocity data ingestion.

“Our customers are seeing dramatic improvements in both latency and costs,” added Michael Schmidt, CTO of simplyblock. “For example, database workloads running on AWS i3en instances are achieving consistent sub-millisecond latency while, at the same time, reducing storage costs through our intelligent tiering capabilities and other intelligent data services.”

Simplyblock offers multiple deployment architectures to match specific performance and operational requirements:

• Compute-adjacent deployment, co-located with Kubernetes compute worker nodes, for ultra-low latency (suited for most latency-sensitive workloads)
• Disaggregated deployment allowing independent scalability of storage and compute resources
• Hybrid deployment combining both models for optimal flexibility and performance

“Organizations require flexibility in how they deploy and scale their data infrastructure,” explained Rob Pankow. “Our compute-adjacent deployment on Kubernetes worker nodes delivers unprecedented low latency, while our disaggregated model enables independent scaling. Customers can even mix these approaches to optimize for different workloads within the same environment. Simplyblock is the only solution on the market offering such a level of flexibility.”

Simplyblock maintains a strong focus on data sovereignty and security. All deployments are private, with data and storage infrastructure residing entirely within the customer’s own AWS accounts. The technology provides full data encryption at-rest and in-transit. Simplyblock can effectively meet the data storage and regulatory requirements of industries subject to strict regulations, such as GDPR or CCPA.

The platform follows a pay-per-use pricing model, allowing organizations to start small and scale as needed. Thanks to thin provisioning and intelligent tiering capabilities, customers using simplyblock pay the cloud provider only for the storage they actually use rather than pre-provisioned capacity. This approach aligns perfectly with modern cloud-native and serverless operations and helps organizations optimize their storage costs as they grow. Simplyblock is available immediately through the AWS Marketplace.

For more information about simplyblock on AWS, visit https://www.simplyblock.io/simplyblock-for-aws/

About Simplyblock:

Simplyblock’s intelligent storage optimization platform provides a unified high-performance storage solution for modern data infrastructures. The NVMe-first platform helps organizations reduce storage and database costs and improve performance by unifying access to different storage technologies behind a single interface. For more information, visit www.simplyblock.io.

Media Contact:
press@simplyblock.io

Link to the announcement (will be live at embargo time):
www.simplyblock.io/press-releases/simplyblock-announces-aws-general-availability

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Simplyblock, the leading cloud-native storage orchestration platform, announced today an impressive achievement in the MLPerf™️ Storage v1.0 Benchmark organized by MLCommons, showcasing its ability to optimize AI workloads and GPU performance on AWS. Simplyblock achieved a 99.4% GPU utilization rate, proving its capability to maximize efficiency while dramatically cutting storage costs for AI, Machine Learning, and Vector Database infrastructures.

In the face of rapid AI advancement, organizations demand highly efficient, high-throughput, and low-latency storage solutions to support the enormous data loads that modern AI workloads require. Simplyblock’s intelligent storage orchestration addresses this need by seamlessly integrating and managing AWS storage services, including Amazon EBS, Amazon S3, and local NVMe instance storage. The result is a unified, high-performance storage environment that meets the stringent requirements of AI and ML applications.

Benchmark Success: Scaling AI Infrastructure on AWS

Simplyblock’s achievement was demonstrated through its participation in the MLPerf Storage v1.0 Benchmark. The test involved running an AWS storage cluster on five i3en.6xlarge nodes, coupled with a single c6in.8xlarge client that managed 24 H100 GPUs. This configuration delivered an impressive throughput of over 37 Gbit/s (~194 MB/s per GPU) and achieved an average GPU utilization rate of 99.4%. Performance can be scaled linearly by adding more clients running the workload.

The MLPerf Storage benchmark is the first and only open, transparent benchmark to measure storage performance in a diverse set of ML training scenarios. It emulates the storage demands across several scenarios and system configurations covering a range of accelerators, models, and workloads.The benchmark emulates NVIDIA A100 and H100 AI accelerator models as representatives of the current generation of accelerator technology.

This benchmark highlights simplyblock’s ability to serve AI workloads efficiently, a key consideration for organizations running data-intensive AI models. Traditionally, such workloads have been bottlenecked by slow storage access through legacy systems, such as NFS connections. Simplyblock breaks this limitation by providing high-throughput, low-latency NVMe-based block storage, which can be accessed by multiple clients simultaneously, ensuring that data remains readily available for high-demand AI training and inference operations.

Rob Pankow, CEO of Simplyblock

“As AI moves to the center of the spotlight, it’s crucial that data and storage infrastructure solutions keep pace with the increasing demands of ML workloads. Our performance in the MLCommons benchmark demonstrates that simplyblock not only meets these demands but exceeds them, offering unparalleled efficiency and cost-effectiveness. What’s especially notable is that we’ve achieved these results on AWS, at a time when most AI training still happens outside of public clouds. Simplyblock brings the ability to run AI cost-efficiently on AWS and positions us to serve not only AI and ML workloads but any future high-performance use cases that AI may drive. We are happy to partner with MLCommons to support the efforts of developing an industry-standard benchmark.”

Rediscovering AI and ML Storage with simplyblock

Simplyblock’s orchestration platform stands out by creating dynamic storage pools, which are thinly provisioned into logical volumes, offering superior flexibility and cost efficiency. By orchestrating data across multiple AWS storage solutions (including Amazon S3 for cost-effective long-term storage and Amazon EBS for high-performance SSD storage), simplyblock can significantly reduce storage expenditures while simultaneously delivering top-tier performance.​

For AI and ML workloads, particularly those involving vector databases and large-scale model training, efficient GPU utilization and fast access to training data are critical. Simplyblock ensures that storage bottlenecks are eliminated, allowing organizations to fully exploit their GPU resources and further accelerate model training and inference times.

Use Cases in AI and Machine Learning

• • Telecommunications: For telcos running critical infrastructure such as PostgreSQL databases or Kafka brokers for billing systems, simplyblock’s low-latency storage ensures real-time data processing without compromising performance. With automatic cross-system disaster recovery options and point-in-time recovery, critical customer data remains safe and operations uninterrupted.

• • E-commerce: For e-commerce platforms handling real-time customer data, simplyblock provides the low-latency storage required to power AI-driven recommendation engines, dynamic pricing algorithms, and real-time inventory management. With automatic storage tiering and scalable storage pools, simplyblock helps reduce costs by transparently moving infrequently accessed data to cheaper storage solutions like Amazon S3, while ensuring high-performance for critical, frequently accessed data during peak traffic events such as Black Friday sales.

• SaaS: SaaS providers on AWS benefit from Simplyblock’s thin provisioning and automatic storage tiering, reducing the need for manual storage management and minimizing costs by moving infrequently accessed data to cheaper storage options, like Amazon S3, without impacting application performance.

The Future of AI-Optimized Storage

With AI and machine learning workloads set to grow exponentially, simplyblock offers a solution that combines high performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency. By delivering near-perfect GPU utilization, as demonstrated in the MLPerf benchmark, simplyblock is well-positioned to become the go-to storage solution for companies pushing the boundaries of AI and data-driven innovations.

About MLCommons:

MLCommons is the world leader in building benchmarks for AI. It is an open engineering consortium with a mission to make AI better for everyone through benchmarks and data. The foundation for MLCommons began with the MLPerf benchmarks in 2018, which rapidly scaled as a set of industry metrics to measure machine learning performance and promote transparency of machine learning techniques. In collaboration with its 125+ members, global technology providers, academics, and researchers, MLCommons is focused on collaborative engineering work that builds tools for the entire AI industry through benchmarks and metrics, public datasets, and measurements for AI Safety.

About Simplyblock

Simplyblock’s intelligent storage optimization platform orchestrates various AWS storage services, including Amazon EBS, Amazon S3, and local instance NVMe storage, into a unified, high-performance storage solution. Unlike traditional storage systems, simplyblock creates dynamic storage pools that can be divided into thinly provisioned logical volumes, offering unprecedented flexibility and efficiency for AI and Machine Learning infrastructures.

For more information, visit: www.simplyblock.io

Media Contact

press@simplyblock.io

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Simplyblock, the Berlin-based high performance cloud storage startup, has today announced a $2.75M seed funding round.

The round was led by 42CAP, the pan-European seed stage VC firm alongside Antler, the most active early-stage investor in Europe and Begin Capital, an international VC firm based in London. High profile angel investors include Johan Svensson, the founder of Neo4j, the leading graph database company.

Simplyblock builds low-latency, high performance cloud storage. In this deep-tech industry traditionally dominated by cloud providers in the US and Israeli startups, Simplyblock is the only startup from Europe building in this space. The company is initially targeting database users of any kind (SQL, NoSQL, Vector or Graph) as first customers. With the first release simplyblock will be available for AWS users worldwide.

The German startup rides on the latest technology advancements in SSD drives (NVMe technology) to provide predictable, ultra-low latency software thereby realizing the full potential of the underlying hardware for users. Its tech, written mostly in C/C++ to leverage the capabilities of low-level Linux features, provides the ability to perform millions of operations per second (IOPS) with sub-millisecond latency. This means that software is up to 10x faster with a 50x better cost-to-performance ratio than legacy solutions in the enterprise as well as existing cloud storage.

Simplyblock’s technology is so important because data volumes on an annual basis are expected to rise 1,000% by 2030. As a result, the data storage market is expected to be worth $250BN, with more and more companies looking for fast, affordable and safe storage solutions.

There is also an important environmental impact to this technology. Data centres are responsible for more carbon emissions than the aviation industry and the International Energy Agency has called on data centres to halve their emissions by 2030. The low-latency, high performance solution built by Simplyblock will significantly reduce the energy consumption required for cloud storage.

Whilst Simplyblock is already open for early-access customers running databases on AWS, the funding round will allow Simplyblock to expand its engineering team and take the product to general availability later in the year.

Michael Schmidt, co-founder & CTO of Simplyblock, comments, “As a CIO, I started to question the cost/performance ratio of Enterprise Storage Systems in the light of the latest generation of storage hardware such as ultra-fast NVMe SSDs. It turned out that Enterprise Data Storage is quite an inert industry. And later on it became evident that fast cloud storage has at least the same potential for innovation and optimization. That is how we came up with an alternative, which is more flexible and better scalable, has better performance at much lower cost and reduced carbon emissions than today’s systems and services.”

Moritz Zimmermann, General Partner at 42CAP, comments, “We were surprised how much room for optimisation there still is in data storage – something that at first glance might seem like a commodity and highly optimised thing. The deep-tech nature of such technology makes it relatively sticky and innovation must be radical for the users to make the switch. The technology change in storage usually happens in 10-20 years cycles. Simplyblock is tackling the problem from a really innovative angle, breaking many of the existing paradigms in terms of how storage is accessed and consumed, and we believe that they can be a leader of the next technology wave in cloud storage.”

The founders of Simplyblock first met during an Antler residency in Berlin in 2022. The team brings considerable technical experience following careers working for global tech businesses and unicorns.

Rob Pankow, co-founder and CEO, previously held senior roles at Rocket Internet startups and Delivery Hero. His background is scaling up businesses at different stages of growth. He leads sales and business development at Simplyblock.

Michael Schmidt, co-founder and CTO, has spent 20 years working in IT, holding CTO positions at large businesses as well as founding a number of businesses in the enterprise software space.

The founders have already built a small but very experienced team of ten, which includes engineers that have worked for companies such as NVIDIA, Mellanox, NetApp, Dell EMC, Instana and Timescale.

Joël van Dijk, Partner at Begin Capital, comments, “The Simplyblock team is one of the strongest tech teams out there in the European cloud storage sector. There is momentum and a necessity created for optimizing data storage. Data usage and storage will be growing exponentially and therefore there will be an expected price increase from the supply side. I am looking forward to working together with the team and to supporting them in this entrepreneurial journey”.

Alan Poensgen, Partner at Antler, comments, “Rob and Michael really excited us as a founding team. They make a very compelling combination – one deeply technical founder with decades of experience who built this technology to solve real problems that he faced, and one operating founder with a proven track record scaling some of Europe’s most successful tech companies. They are uniquely placed to build this type of cloud storage solution – a first in Europe – and we are delighted to have supported them from day zero.”

About Simplyblock

Simplyblock is a German deep-tech startup developing low-latency high-performance storage software that helps businesses maximise the efficiency of their cloud storage for critical workloads, databases & applications. The software can be deployed on public clouds such as AWS, Google Cloud and Azure and in private clouds. Simplyblock’s technology offers up to 50x improved cost-to-performance ratio compared to legacy storage solutions. The company operates remote-first and is hiring across engineering roles.

About 42CAP

42CAP is a pan-European VC firm investing in seed-stage technology-driven companies across Europe with global ambition. Seasoned entrepreneurs turned investors. With Hybris and eCircle they previously built two of Europe’s largest B2B software companies culminating in $1.6b cash exits to SAP and Teradata respectively. The 42CAP credo “Peers amongst Entrepreneurs” is reflected in their investment approach, with which they support data- and technology-driven business models, product-focused founders and sustainable venture development.

About Begin Capital

Begin Capital is a venture capital firm based in London, UK, focusing on global pre-seed – Series A investments. Begin has a sector agnostic approach but specialised in infrastructure SaaS, vertical SaaS and deeptech. The firm has invested in companies like FundraiseUp, Convious, Middleware and Bulbshare.

About Antler

Antler is the world’s day zero investor that inspires, enables, and invests in visionary founders everywhere. Founded on the belief that talent is everywhere but opportunity is not, we remove the barriers to entrepreneurship so more people can launch sustainable businesses that solve meaningful problems, drive innovation, and improve lives. We partner with the most early-stage entrepreneurs around the world through our residencies in 27 cities across six continents—Austin, Berlin, Bangalore, Jakarta, London, New York, Singapore, Stockholm, Sydney, and beyond. As an extension of our founders’ team, our global community backs them from the beginning and keeps backing them with team formation, deep business model validation, initial capital, global scaling, and follow-on funding, with a personal passion that goes beyond traditional investing. To date, we have brought more than 1,000 startups into existence that are delivering paradigm-shifting solutions across all industries, with the goal of backing more than 6,000 by 2030.

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